flower song. She adorns herself, and then puts on her wed-ding dress.

With the coming of night, Butterfly, Suzuki, and the boy sit in silence and stillness before the window, awaiting Pinkerton's arrival, peering out through little holes in the paper screens that cover the window.

Act Three

Scene — the same room in Butterfly's house. The three are still at their posts, watching for Pinkerton's return, after the shades of darkness have with-drawn, routed before the heralds of the luminous dawn. But Suzuki and the boy have sunk into sleep, and Butterfly alone has stayed awake. She carries the child into an inner room, crooning the tender song "Sleep, my beloved"... Hardly has she left the hall carrying the child

when Pinkerton arrives in the company of the consul Sharpless. Joy floods over Suzuki at the first moment, but the two men ask her to be calm. She catches sight of an American lady in the garden and asks who she is, and Sharpless sees no course but to tell her the truth outright... It is Pinkerton's American wife, and these two have come to adopt the child. Suzuki is struck helpless, and despair takes hold of her. Pinkerton leaves the place after a few moments, and Butterfly returns to find Sharpless, a strange American lady in the garden, and her servant Suzuki with tears in her eyes. And she grasps the dreadful truth... Butterfly consents to give up the child, asking that Pinkerton come back to take him in half an hour. She remains alone; with perfect calm she draws her dagger and

reads the words engraved upon it: "Death with honor is better than life without it."

Suzuki sends the child in to his mother Butterfly, who bids him a tender farewell that would break the hardest heart; she seats him on a little stool facing her, gives him a doll and an American flag to play with, and then binds his eyes. She takes up the dagger and disappears behind a screen. Pinkerton's voice echoes from outside, calling: "Butterfly... Butterfly!" — but too late. The sound of the dagger falling to the floor is heard, and Butterfly comes out staggering, striving to reach her child, and falls at his side. Pinkerton rushes into the room and drops to his knees before Butterfly's body, sobbing for very grief and shame — and the curtain falls slowly...